All The Help There Is
by HecateA
Summary: Remus has no illusions about how awkward meeting his new in-laws will be, but he does have stress-baking and a legendary pie recipe on his side. Oneshot.


**Author's Note: **Enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

**Hogwarts: **Assignment 8, Extinct Languages, Task #1 Write about something or someone being well known.

**Warnings:** NA

* * *

**Stacked with:** Hogwarts; Fall Bingo; Shipping Wars; Shadows of Consequences; Cluster of Rainbows

**Individual Challenge(s): **Black Ribbon; Black Ribbon Redux; Gryffindor MC; Hufflepuff MC; Seeds; Golden Times; Old Shoes; Themes & Things A (Family); Themes & Things B (Joy); Themes & Things C (Dressing gown/robe); True Colours; Rian-Russo Inversion; In a Flash; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux

**Representation(s): **

**Bonus Challenge(s):** Under the Bridge; Getting On; Soul-like; Second Verse (Middle Name); Chorus (Delicious Lie);

**Tertiary Bonus Challenge(s):** NA

**Word Count:** 652

* * *

_**Shipping Wars**_

**Ship (Team): **Nymphadora Tonks/Remus Lupin (Technicolour Moon)

**List (Prompt): **Fall Medium 2 (Pie/Tart)

* * *

_**Fall Bingo **_

**Space Address (Prompt): **3B (Fruits/vegetables)

* * *

**All The Help There is to Get **

"So not only were you up before 9:00 a.m. but you've been baking since even earlier…" Dora said. He looked over his shoulder and there she was, in her pajama shorts and a tank top, robe thrown over her shoulders almost teasingly.

"I didn't wake you, did I?" Remus asked. "I tried to be quiet."

"Oh, you were," Dora said. "But now that I'm here, what's all this?"

She gestured towards the kitchen generally—the floured counter, the multiple mixing bowls, the strainer full of blackberries draining in the sink…

"I'm making a pie," Remus said, turning back to a bowl. He tilted a tiny bottle of almond extract into the bowl before he started…

"Are you zesting a lemon?" Dora asked. "What kind of pie is this?"

"A very good one," Remus said. "It's my mother's recipe, she won pie competitions in every town we lived in, while I was growing up, and we moved around a _lot. _This blackberry pie was famous—and rightly so. It's a good pie. People asked for it at bake sales, potlucks, dinner parties…"

"And the secret ingredient is making it before you brew any coffee?"

"No, no, I made your coffee," Remus said, nodding his head towards the coffee pot.

"Brilliant. So is it love, then? The secret ingredient..."

"It can't be a secret if I just _tell _you," Remus said with a grin.

"Hmmph," she protested, pouring herself a cup of coffee and leaning on the counter to observe. "So you're making this pie at the crack of dawn for what reason, exactly?"

"8:35 a.m. is hardly the crack of dawn," Remus argued. "You told your parents we'd bring dessert, didn't you?"

"I always tell my parents I'll bring dessert and nine times out of ten I forget," she said. "Mum usually makes something just in case…"

"Not today," Remus said. "Not when it's the first time you're bringing me along too. We're bringing pie—a _good _pie."

"Famous pie, I hear," Dora said.

"You're laughing at me," Remus noted.

"I'm not," Dora said. "But, you know, dinner's in about ten hours…"

"I wanted to give myself extra time to bake another in case I burn the first," Remus said. "Which I won't, because this is a _great _pie, but just in case…"

"You don't mess with your pie do you?" Dora asked.

"Not this pie," Remus said. "This pie is important. This pie says, 'look, you can trust me to bring dessert when you put us in charge of bringing dessert' and 'look, your daughter said she was bringing dessert and I made pie so maybe it's okay that we're an 'us'' and 'please be okay with the fact that I married your daughter even if you don't know me very well' as well as 'please don't mind the lycanthrope, I come bearing pie.' All of these things that the pie will say will help make this dinner not a disaster."

"Well, when you put it that way, it does sound kinda bad huh?" Dora said, hopping onto the counter. Remus turned and looked over his shoulder to give her a look. He shook the last few droplets of water out of his blackberry strainer and poured them into a mixing bowl, going back to stirring. Dora didn't know pie, not this famous pie or any other pie for that matter, but the mixing seemed a little frantic to her.

Dora put down her coffee, hopped off the counter, and crossed the room to wrap her arms around his waist again.

"I love you," she said. "Pie or no pie. They'll love you too."

"Pie can't hurt," Remus grumbled. She laughed.

"Famous pie can't hurt," she corrected him. It was his turn to laugh, and while he did she grabbed a blackberry from his bowl of pie filling.

"Put some extra love in it," she told him. "That'll do the trick."


End file.
